Last
month in Miami Beach I was riding in a taxi when I saw out of the
window a remarkable sight—a forty-two-foot-tall sculpture of a hand
reaching skyward out of a reflecting pond.And scrambling up the wrist were what seemed to be life-sized human figures.

One
of the things I collect is images of hands—everything from a door
knocker to anti-evil eye talismans to a wooden “Hand of God” with a
saint perched atop each finger and a gash in the palm.I
have patterns for the henna designs painted on the hands of an Indian
bride, for example, before her wedding, in the mehndi ritual.So
I knew I had to learn more about the gigantic hand I had come across
while riding on Meridian Avenue near Dade Boulevard in South Beach.

I
learned that it is a memorial, dedicated to the six million Jewish
victims of the holocaust. After four years of construction, it was
dedicated by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel on February 4, 1990.

Entrance
is free. As I walked through the sculpture garden, like everyone else
who has seen it, I was deeply moved by a history that I had heard many
times before, but never in such a personal way.As I followed the trail through the sunlit sculpture park, I was walking from the beginning to the end of theholocaust years and retracing the journey of so many victims—beginning withfear and foreboding and ending in despair and death.

Because
I found myself walking through a tunnel that becomes narrower, and then
emerging into a scene of desperate agony, surrounded by life-sized
naked figures in bronze, the experience seemed terrifyingly real,
despite the towering palm
trees and the water lilies in the serene reflecting pool-- an ironic
contrast to the hysterical grief and fear portrayed within.

The
huge bronze hand (which has an Auschwitz camp number carved on the
wrist) and the one hundred figures were designed by Kenneth Treister and
cast in Mexico City by Fundicion Artistica.

While walking through the exhibition, I felt as though I was interacting with the statues—sharing their fear and agony.And after the visit, I felt changed, certainly in my understanding of the holocaust.I thinkthat is thedefinition of successful art—you interact with it and it leaves you changed.

At
the beginning of the journey is this statue of a mother and two
children beneath a quotation from Ann Frank: “…that in spite of
everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

Then
you walk along a black granite wall that summarizes in words and
photographs the history of the holocaust from 1939 to 1945.At the end of the wall is engraved a poem and a hymn from the ghetto.

Next you enter a tunnel, starting with a dome that has a stained glass Star of David overhead with the word “Jude”.As the memorial’s historian Helen Feigen writes, it’s “the patch of ignominy”.

You’re now in the square tunnel, carved with names of the death camps, that becomes smaller as you continue.You hear the sound of children’s voices singing songs from the concentration camps.All you can see at the end of the tunnel is a small, seated child, wailing and reaching out for help.As you walk toward the light, the voices of the children get louder and louder.Then you emerge from the tunnel to find yourself staring up at the immense hand, crawling with people in agony.You walk among free-standing figures who are all reaching for help.

According to Helen Feigen, the historian, “A
giant outstretched arm, tattooed with a number from Auschwitz, rises
from the earth, the last reach of a dying person. Each visitor has his
own interpretation ... some see despair ... some hope ... some the last
grasp for life . . . and for some it asks a question to God... ‘Why?’”

At
this point, you walk around the giant hand, examining the family
groups, young people trying to comfort their elders, children trying to
soothe their younger siblings, mothers trying to hand their babies to
safety.But no one is safe and there is no way out.And the visitor is a part of the scene.

Then you notice the black granite walls engraved with names of the victims.

Finally,
when you’ve had enough of this scene of despair, you continue on to the
final piece of sculpture, which is the same mother and two children
seen at the beginning, but now they’re lying dead underneath another
quotation from Ann Frank: "ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us only to meet the horrible truths and be shattered:"

Then
you are free to contemplate the peace and beauty of the reflecting pool
and the sunny sky, and eventually to return to the tropical scenery of
Miami Beach. But you can’t shake the feelings that you had standing
below that giant hand, imagining the stories of all those victims who
were still trying to help each other in the hour of their death.

Maybe
this is why I’ve always been fascinated by representations of
hands—because they can be so indicative of the creativity and strengthof the human being, and yet so vulnerable—think of the hands of a baby.And
in almost every culture, the image of the human hand seems to be a
symbol, an invocation, a magical talisman, or the seal on a pledge.Or a cry for help.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

I keep reading about the new Emily Dickinson show at the Morgan Library& Museum in Manhattan and I can't wait to see it. It's called "I'm Nobody! Who are you? The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson". (It's there until May 21.) It has all sorts of news and gossip about the mysterious and reclusive poet. As the NY Post commented "This is shaping up as a good year for the "Belle of Amherst" who never married and died, aged 55...In April we'll see Cynthia Nixon play her in the film 'A Quiet Passion.'" Reading this inspired me to re-post a photo essay I published seven years ago about my near miss at acquiring a photographic image of Emily--which, to antique photo collectors like myself, would be the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail.(Please click on the photos to enlarge them.)

There
are a few photographs of long-dead celebrities that are so rare, people
will pay close to a million dollars for them. If you come across a
previously unknown image of, say, Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allan Poe, John
Brown, John Wilkes Booth, Jesse James, to name a few, you have
discovered a real treasure.

One of these iconic images
would be a new portrait of Emily Dickinson. That’s what a professor at
the University of North Carolina, Philip F. Gura, thought he had found
on an E-Bay auction that he won on April 12, 2000. It was an albumen
photograph (the bottom row above).

Later Gura wrote a
delightful description of his torturous six-month search to validate
the image. It’s called “How I Met and Dated Miss Emily Dickinson: An
Adventure on eBay.”

Read it on http://www.common-place.org/vol-04/no-02/gura/

Gura
wrote about Emily Dickinson: “Even though she lived when the new
invention of photography was changing the ways people thought about
themselves, there is only one known photographic likeness of her, taken
by William C. North. It was made between December 1846 and March 1847,
and shows a thin teenager suffering from what her family took as the
first symptoms of tuberculosis.

“A second photograph of Dickinson has long been the Holy Grail of artifacts for scholars in my field…”

Gura
paid $481 to win the albumen photograph with “Emily Dickinson” written
on the back. As soon as it arrived from the eBay seller, the professor
set about trying to validate it. He soon had calls from The New York Times and the New Yorker, who were vying to be the first with the news of his discovery.

Then
NPR and many papers around the world were knocking at his door. After
much trouble, Gura finally found a forensic anthropologist who was able
to measure and compare various anatomical landmarks on the two faces
(the original verified dag above left and the new-found albumen photo
in the third row). This seems so much quicker and easier on TV shows
like CSI and Bones!

Meanwhile two historians of
costume analyzed the sitter’s clothing and determined that the albumen
photo was a copy of an original daguerreotype taken sometime between
1848 and 1853.

In the one verified image of Emily — the
daguerreotype at the upper left-- she is either sixteen or 17 years
old. It was taken at Mt. Holyoke and is in the possession of Amherst
College.

After all his research, Prof. Gura still
doesn’t have a positive "yes" answer. But he believes that it is
indeed Emily and quotes one reporter: “Although the forensic analysis of
Gura’s photo strongly suggests the woman is ED, no one can say for
sure. By the same token, no one apparently can say that the woman is
NOT Dickinson.”

Something that was not reported by international media, (but is reported here exclusively on A Rolling Crone),
is that I had a very similar experience to Philip Gura’s. But it
happened exactly four months earlier. On Jan. 13, 2000, I purchased
on eBay a 1/6 plate daguerreotype of a young woman who looked strikingly
like Emily Dickinson. The famous verified Emily image is on the left
above, on the right is my dag, which I purchased for $127.50 from a
seller in the Berkshires of Massachusetts.

But
the seller was not making any claims that he couldn’t prove: “Purchased
some time ago from an estate auctioned [sic] near Amherst, Mass. A
fine daguerreotype…an intriguing and attractive young woman. …Some say
she is, some say she looks like, Emily Dickinson. And some say not.
Draw your own conclusion (there is one surviving dag of this noted
Amherst author.) A fine daguerreotype either way.”

I
studied the small photo on eBay and tried to compare it to the one
verified dag. Like Philip Gura some months later, I waited in suspense
for it to arrive. I imagined the excitement, the glory, the press
attention if it proved to be an actual second image of the Belle of
Amherst.

You must admit, looking at the two dags side
by side, that the resemblance is striking. Even the style of dress and
hair and the pose itself. (Emily is near a book and holding what I
think is a flower in the official dag. In my image the woman has an
adorable beaded bag hanging from her arm. They even seem to be wearing
the same kind of dark bracelet, which may or may not be a mourning
bracelet made of human hair.)

But I didn’t have to
consult forensic anthropologists and costume historians to validate my
image when it came. I took one look at the actual dag that lay in my
hand and I realized she couldn’t be the real Emily, because, judging
from the one true photograph, Emily had dark brown eyes and the woman in
MY image had pale blue eyes.

I should have known this,
because Emily once wrote to an admirer (who asked for a portrait) this
description of herself: “I…am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is
bold, like the Chestnut Bur-and my Eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass,
that the guest leaves – would this do just as well?”

So
mine is not a priceless iconic image, and the world’s press is not
about to come calling — as it did four months later when Professor Gura
discovered his image of ED on eBay. But I like ”my” Emily anyway and
would never part with her, because this woman was a contemporary,
perhaps a neighbor — perhaps even a relative -- of the real Emily. She
certainly has a remarkable resemblance to the mysterious and secretive
Belle of Amherst, who wore white and refused to come out of her room in
the last years of her life, talking to visitors through a closed door.

And
then after her death, her sister Lavina discovered the 1800 poems
hidden away in her drawer. The first volume was published four years
after Emily died in 1886 at the age of 55.

Friday, January 20, 2017

As a respite from today's ceremonies, let's take a look at something I posted on Nov. 7, 2012, in the good old days when Trump was so angry about Obama's victory that he got first and second place on Salon's "Sore Losers" list for his angry tweets. Now he's a lot less funny as an exultant winner (but not winner of the popular vote) than he was as a sore loser.

Much more fun than following the pre-election debates (yawn!) and the
election night results is reading today's after- election commentary
and Monday-morning quarterbacking on the internet.

Trending
now as number one topic on Yahoo is not a search for the breakdown of
electoral votes, but the burning question: Was Diane Sawyer drunk?
Evidently ABC and her colleagues are saying she was merely exhausted
from staying up night after night memorizing election facts and figures.
I say, never mind if she was celebrating Obama's win off camera; she
still did a great job. I think Diane Sawyer's wicked smart and gorgeous
to boot.

Salon has listed the 20 top sore losers after
the election results came in and Donald Trump has won first and second
place in this race for two tweets , one of which he has deleted after
cooling down a little. This is what Salon said about Trump:

(Credit: Salon/Benjamin Wheelock)

As
election night wore on and an Obama victory became more and more
likely, conservatives began explaining away the loss for Mitt Romney and
other Republicans. On Fox, Bill O’Reilly kicked it off on a sour note, predicting on
Fox News: “Obama wins because it’s not a traditional America anymore.
The white establishment is the minority. People want things.” Then it
deteriorated.

Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us.

I think the painting of Trump on Salon (above, by Benjamin
Wheelock) is probably adding to the mogul's anger and disappointment
over Romney's loss, so I thought I'd repost a portrait of Trump which
hangs in his estate Mar-a-Lago, which is now a private club. This is
the way Trump prefers to see himself portrayed:

I
first posted my photograph of this painting after a lunch at Mar-a-Lago
in April 2011 when the Donald and his family passed through and greeted
us visitors. This is what I posted about it:

Someone
passed this self-aggrandizing photo on to political blogger Andrew
Sullivan, whose blog is Goliath to "A Rolling Crone's" David. When
Sullivan posted it, hilarity ensued, but no one knew where the photo
came from in the first place until another political blogger, Michael
Shaw, traced it back to my humble blog and my pocket digital camera.
Suddenly I was getting 3,000 hits an hour--a heady experience for a
novice blogger. If you want to read more about the brouhaha, click on

Meanwhile
I'm going back to search the internet for more sour-grapes tweets from
Trump and explanations of Diane Sawyer's slurring. It takes my mind off
the rain, sleet and snow in the nor'easter which is fast heading our
way. (Now where did I store that snow shovel?)

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

In honor of St. Anthony's day, which was yesterday, I'm re-posting this photo-essay which was first published on Feb. 10, 2011.

On
Tuesday, arriving in Morelia, Mexico on Day One of the Monarch
Butterflies and Michoacån Cuisine tour, I didn’t see a single butterfly
but did learn about a place that may be more efficient than E-Harmony
and Match.com in helping single ladies find the man of their dreams.

It was San Miguelito, the restaurant in Morelia where we ate the first night.It calls itself a “Restaurante, Bazar, Galeria, & Museo” and they’re not kidding.

In
addition to scrumptious Mexican food, they sell Day of the Dead
figures, Botero-like fat little angels, a wooden chair that is also a
skeleton, and aprons imprinted with Guadalupe.

But
the main draw is the back room, which, in addition to dining tables and
chairs, holds more than 700 images of St. Anthony of Padua all UPSIDE
DOWN.

For
over twenty years, according to proprietor Cynthia Martinez, single
women have been thronging to this room to beg St. Anthony to intercede
for them and send their destined mate to their side.

There are bulletin boards filled with photos and thanks from satisfied customers who have finally met their soul mate.

Here is what you have to do:take 13 coins of the same denomination from two bags hanging nearby.Line up 13 coins on the base of the main St Anthony statue.Walk around the statue 13 times.Pray to St. Anthony.(Suggested prayer below. The restaurant also provides a Spanish-language version.)

There is a three-hole notebook below the statue on which you can write your specific request.One woman covered 21 pages detailing her requirements in a mate.

Nearby is a shelf holding some of the dozens of notebooks which have been filled in the past two decades with single women’s requests.

Back
in the U.S. I had heard that people wanting to sell their homes would
bury a statue of St Anthony in the front year, upside down of course, to
speed up the sale. (A new friend, Christina, tells me that that’s
actually St. Joseph.)

I
think the point of the St. Anthony ritual is that, when your wish is
fulfilled, you will release the saint and turn him back over.But the St. Anthonys at SanMiguelito restaurant in Morelia have been standing upside-down for so long, while bringing couples together, that Idon’t think they have any hope of landing on their feet again.

Here is a poster on the restaurant’s wall advertising the Saint’s miraculous powers to lead you to love.

If you want to try this ritual at home:get your own statue of St. Anthony and 13 identical coins and give it a try.Here is a suggested prayer I found on the internet.If you would like to have the Spanish-language prayer given out by San Miguelito Restaurant, write me at JoanPGage@yahoo.com.

Oh
Wonderful St.Anthony, glorious on account of the fame of thy miracles,
and through the condescension of Jesus in coming in the form of a little
child to rest in thy arms, obtain for me of his bounty the grace which I
ardently desire from the depths of my heart. Thou who was so loving
towards miserable sinners, regard not the unworthiness of those who pray
to thee, but the glory of God that it may be once again magnified by
this request which I now make to you. Amen

Saturday, January 7, 2017

As the snow piles up outside, I'm taking a trip to sunny Mykonos in my mind and re-posting a photo essay first published six years ago. These photos are going to have to last me through the current blizzard and into next July.

My friend Helen has a son living in a New York apartment with bare
walls, and she promised him some "art" for those walls for Christmas.
He loves the Greek islands of Mykonos and Santorini --especially the
beaches and the waves, she said, asking me to come up with some photos
of those two islands so she could choose several that I would have
printed in a large size and matted and framed for his Christmas gift.

This
gave me a delightful chance to go back through photos taken four or
five years ago on those islands to give her a selection to choose from.
The photo above shows a Greek woman meeting Petros, the famous pelican
who is the mascot of Mykonos. It seems that there has been a pelican
named Petros wandering the harbor around the fish market since forever.
The original Petros died in 1986, it is said, and the whole island went
into mourning. Then Jackie Kennedy Onassis obtained a new pelican,
named Irene, to take its place. I think there are actually several
tame pelicans lurking around the harbor, but the natives will always
tell you that the pelican you are pointing at is Petros.

Here
is another shot of Petros--or is it Irene? It's a rather pink pelican,
so maybe it's a female. Helen chose three other photos for her son's
Christmas gift, but said she might eventually get this one for herself,
as she really loves the pelican.

This
church--right on Mykonos' harbor near the fish market, is said to be
one of the most photographed churches in Greece. It's very tiny. It
shows in the background of a painting I did of two men in the vegetable
market. I use that painting on my business card. And I went back to
Mykonos and showed it to the vegetable seller last year. He loved it.
He said the old gentleman who was his customer in my painting has now
passed away. Here's the painting.

Here's
another photo of Mykonos taken from the second-story veranda of a bar
where we always go to watch the sun set. The row of windmills at the
end of the harbor are the symbol of Mykonos--so this scene is easily
recognizable to anyone who has been there. The stretch of picturesque
buildings on the left is called "Little Venice"

This
photo was taken during the "golden hour" as photographers call it--the
hour before the sun goes down, when everything turns a beautiful color,
including the white-washed stucco houses of Little Venice. Fashion
photographers often take advantage of the golden hour which makes
everything, including their models and their fashions look better.

Here is a view of Little Venice looking in the other direction, when I was standing below the windmills.

While
sitting in our favorite Mykonos bar, waiting for the sun to go down, I
took this photo of my glass of wine with the windmills in the
background. It was at this same place that my daughter Eleni took the
photo of me that I use for my profile photo.

As the sun set, we saw this wonderful view of an anchored sailing ship silhouetted against the sky.

Here's
one last photo of Mykonos taken from the beach of Aghios
Sostis--Eleni's favorite place in the world. The beach is fabulous and
up the hill there's a small taverna with heavenly food cooked in the
simplest way on a grill.

Mykonos
is a very sophisticated island filled with international visitors and
very expensive stores. It's all white stucco buildings and shocking
pink bougainvillea and narrow, winding streets meant to confuse raiding
pirates The island is known for its hard-partying ways and the
significant gay culture there. There are many nudist beaches and loud
nightclubs, but there are also wonderful isolated spots like this one.

In my previous blog post I showed you the photos of Santorini and told you which ones Helen chose for her gifts to her son.

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

(Because we all could use a little Greek sunshine right now, I'm re-posting this photo essay from six years ago. Soon I'll re-post the photo essay I did on Mykonos, Greece's other most popular Greek island with tourists. Santorini is a favorite of newlyweds and Mykonos is for party animals.)

When people say “Greek islands” they are usually thinking ofMykonos and Santorini, the two most popular (and most expensive) of the countless islands of Greece.Both are in the Cyclades chain (which includes about 220 islands, some uninhabited.).They are characterized by white stucco buildings that look like melting sugar cubes, winding roads that are often blocked by donkeys andstunning views of the sea.

Santorini 1

A large majority of the travel photos you see of Greece are taken on Santorini, becauseit’s impossible to take a bad photo here. A tip: If you see a photo with an alligator-shaped rock lurking out in the sea, then it was taken on Santorini.

Santorini 2

If
Mykonos is the island known for international jetsetters, divine
decadence, nude beaches and hard-partying nights, Santorini is the
island known for the honeymooners who flock there, and is often called
the most romantic island in Greece.

If
coming by boat, you sail into Santorini’s central lagoon, land on the
black sand beach and immediately take either the téléferique--a cable
car in a tunnel --or a donkey to get all the way to the top, where the
two towns of Thera and Oia perch.(You can also try to walk it if you are in really, really good shape.)

Santorini 3

About
3,600 years ago Santorini was the site of the largest volcanic eruption
in recorded history-- the Minoan eruption, when much of the island sank
into the sea, giving rise to the legend of the lost continent of
Atlantis.

Santorini 4

On Santorini there has been excavated a complete prehistoric town, called the Akrotiri, but unlike Pompeii, no dead bodies were found there.Evidently everyone had time and warning enough to leave (although they probably were drowned in the tsunami that followed theeruption).Today
(if the excavation is open to the public—sometimes it’s closed) you can
walk the streets of Akrotiri and look in the houses and see the pots
and furniture and wall paintings they left behind.

Santorini 5

As
I mentioned in an earlier post, my friend Helen asked me to select some
photos that I’d taken of Mykonos and Santorini so that she could select
three to have blown up, matted and framed as a Christmas gift for her
son Nicholas.I posted the photos of Mykonos on Dec. 19.

Santorini 6

All these photos show Santorini, where the views are to die for because everything is terraced down the side of the volcano.Every night, everyone on
the island gathers outside, on roofs and balconies and in tavernas and
especially in a chic bar named Franco’s, where you can reserve a lounge
chair, to watch the sun go down with great drama and music and applause,
when it finally sinks below thehorizon.

Santorini 7

As for which photos Helen chose—she pickednumbers 2 and 5 above and from the Mykonos group, the photo of the golden hour gilding the houses of Little Venice.

A Rolling Crone

After 40 years as a journalist, I turned 60 and decided to return to my first love--painting. I’ve exhibited watercolors and photographs in Massachusetts and have a slide show of paintings below. My photo book “The Secret Life of Greek Cats” can be purchased by clicking on the cover below.
I collect way too many things, but my great passion is antique photographs, from the earliest—daguerreotypes (circa 1840) up to 1900 (cabinet cards, tintypes.) I approach each one as a mystery to solve, and in unlocking their secrets have met some fascinating historic figures. For some of the stories, check the list of “The Story Behind the Photograph”.
My husband Nick and I live in Grafton, MA and recently celebrated our 41st anniversary. We have 3 children, now amazing adults. And on Aug. 26, 2011, we greeted our first grandchild, Amalía-- world’s cutest baby. But this blog isn’t about grandparenting (although photos of the grandkid sneak in). As it says up top, it’s about travel, art, photography and life after sixty. And crone power.